[WALK-THROUGH] Fully Functional Vehicle (my first car).

[Spoof]

Q3. whats the bone limit in the UDK? (because at the moment there are 39 bones, but i think i will also need 3 more to attach the driver)

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CreatingAnimations.html

Technical note:

• The maximum number of mesh-influencing bones in a skeleton is 75.
• The maximum number of total bones in a skeleton is 256.

(Increasing either of these numbers beyond their maximum will cause a second rendering pass on the character, reducing optimization)

• For the mesh, the maximum number of bone influences per vertex is 4. (Upon import, any vertex that is influenced by more than 4 bones will have its lowest influences removed and normalized among the remaining 4 influences for that vertex.) Note that there is a cost based on the max you use for a particular LOD. So if you can get away with using no more than 3, it will be faster. We generally try and use just 1 for LOD 1 and below.

[smokey13]

thanks SPOOF, appreciate it

[geodav]

Spoof to the rescue i didn't know that but then i'm a hobbist. ok best to move the wheel back up to the normal position, you can move it down for exporting.

40 bones thats going to be fun in the animtree

[smokey13]

ok i will move it back up

any suggestions on the the first 2 questions?

40 bones for a first skeletal mesh "i must be crazy", but once there all positioned i will still need to do the spring, now that will be fun

[geodav]

ok the fat end of the bone needs to be in-line to where it has to pivot
go for a single bone
forgot about the spring, i'll have to dig out some old video's to check on it

**** it didn't cover what i thought it did, oh well just add a bone to each spring we'll find a way to get it right

[smokey13]

hooray

all bones are placed and named so the skeleton is finally finished. there are a total of 44 bones, 1 root bone, 3 socket bones, and 40 mechanical bones.
heres a pic

if you see any problems with placemant/names let me know.

i have put 3 bones in to be used as sockets, the first to attach the driver (at a later date) is in the back of the seat, the other 2 are positioned on the steering wheel where the hands of the driver will be. i was just about to parent all the bones of my car to the main bone but the sockets got me thinking, i know i have to parent the bone i put in the seat to the main bone of my car like the rest but was wondering if i should make the steering column bone the parent for the for the 2 bones i have placed as sockets for the hands? (like the turret in the tutorial because they have to rotate with the steering column but they are also sockets so wasnt sure)

while i am waiting for your answer i am going to watch your gun rigging tutorial because you explain about vertex groups and i have no idea how to do them but might be able to figure it out by watching it a couple of times, i hope

[geodav]

ok parent to 2 steering wheel bones to the steering column bone.

most cases the whole element can be weighted to the bone, the only exceptions i can think of is for the suspension which you can try, maybe if you put the spring bone at the bottom of the spring that way you can adjust the vertex weights eg the vertices at the bottom of the spring will be weight 1.0 and those at the top will be 0.0 , and the other way round for the weights to the upper suspension bone

[smokey13]

ok, so i have parented the 2 steering wheel bones to the steering column bone and i have parented the steering column bone and all other bones the the main bone.

now to vertex groups, i watched you weapon rig tutorial a couple of times and i think i get it. in your tutorial you select your mesh (in object mode) then use shift and right click to highlight the bones, at this point you press ctrl P, then you select automatic weights witch creates the vertex groups, names them to correspond to individual bones, and assigns the vertices of the mesh to the different vertex groups. next you select the vertex groups one at a time, select the verticies that are linked to that group and remove them, once you have removed all the vertices from the various groups you assign them all to the main bone, and then you unassign the vertices of as you put it sub objects then reassign those vertices to the correct vertex group (pod verticies to pod vertex group, im my case wheel vertices to wheel group, wishbone verts to wishbone group...ect).

Q1: have i understood it?

Q2: do i set all the wieghts for all the groups to 1 when i assign verticies to them?

the rear wheel hubs have two bones each because if the double wishbones and the technical note spoof posted says that verticies can be assign to more then one bone.

Q3: should i assign the verticies for the rear wheel hubs to both of the bones vertex groups? (left wheel hub to both of the left bones vertex groups, right wheel hub to both right bones vertex groups)


im not sure what to do with the vertex groups for the sockets.

Q4: do i leave them with no verticies assigned?

and finally the suspension, im not sure if i understand what you mean, but what if i assign the lower suspension verticies to the lower bone, assign the upper suspension verticies to the upper bone. now to the spring what if i assign the bottom ring to the spring bone with a wieght of 1, the next ring up a weight of 0.9, next ring 0.8, and keep going to the middle of the spring, then assign the top ring of the spring to the top suspension vertex group with a weight of one, the next ring down assign a weight of 0.9 , then 0.8, and keep going like that till the verticies in the vertex groups for the spring bone and top suspension bone meet in the middle of the spring.

Q5: would that work? (thats basicly a guess and have no idea if thats even possible)

i await your answers for these questions

[geodav]

ok lets see if i"ve got it
yes correct i do it this way to make sure all the vertices are weighted to a bone, its a pain if a vertex doesn't get weighted as you then have to search for the stupid thing as it will cause problems when exporting (or does for me) long winded way but it works.

q1. yep you've got it
q2. in this case yes
q3. for the rear hub just assign to one bone but make sure its the same on both sides
q4. yep empty vertex groups are fine
q5. your psychic thats the way to do it (says Punch)

[smokey13]

AUSOME!!!

i'll get on with that tommorw then.

about the spring, on the middle coil should i overlap the assigned verticies (so the middle coil's verticeies would be assigned to both bones controlling the spring)?

[quetzalcoalt]

Very nice bro good to see some teamwork nice model

[geodav]

yep just the same as the spring

[smokey13]

Very nice bro good to see some teamwork nice model

thanks

GEODAV i just tried to parent the mesh to the bones using automatic wieghts and got this warning


i think it means that not all the vertex groups have verticies assigned to them. as i will be unassigning all the verticies from the vertex groups then reassigning them manually anyway should i still just do it the way i wrote yesterday?

just checking to make sure

[geodav]

never seen that one before, just asking that the mesh is a single mesh eg all the parts are joined together

[smokey13]

i know, wierd warning.

it is all one object/mesh but every piece (wheel, wishbone..ect) are individual sub objects (like your weapons pod, or your cars wheels), so if i select a single vert of a "sub object" then select linked the whole sub object is highlighted.

oh and it turns out no verticies where actually assigned to any vertex groups when i selected a vertex group then pressed the "select" button under the vertex group window no verts highlight.

maybe there are to many bones for blender to do it or something, i did try assigning verticies to vertex groups and it seemed to work fine.